HELP! Does anyone know if companies can guarantee one outcome online but dismiss it instore?

Corkie1997

Hi, so I brought a Chromebook laptop from John Lewis last November, and around February time it started having issues in which it was really laggy, kept restarting and freezing despite only having one application running at a time. After the first lockdown, I took it into my localstore and they sent it for repair under warranty, only to get it back with the issue still there. After taking it in again, I was provided with a replacement that had a separate 2-year warranty attached to it, but after around 2 and a half months, I have begun experiencing the issue with the unresponsive mouse and unexpected restarts again.

As this was during the second lockdown, I contacted John Lewis and told them about the issue, with the customer service agent telling me that I should take it in and technical support will issue a refund (quote ‘you are in more than your right for a refund’). I thought this sounded too good to be true so I questioned this, and the agent said ‘yes 100%’. However, when I took the laptop back into store, technical support said otherwise, despite me having the conversation in writing for them. I was just wondering if there are any laws that prevent customer support from giving misleading information, or whether the store must honour this, as it doesn’t seem fair on the customer to be told one thing, go into store expecting this, and being told otherwise? 

davidmcn

Corkie1997 said:

I was just wondering if there are any laws that prevent customer support from giving misleading information, or whether the store must honour this, as it doesn’t seem fair on the customer to be told one thing, go into store expecting this, and being told otherwise?

No, and no. It might be a bit annoying, but I don't see how it's "unfair" - you have the same rights you would have had in the first place.

Aylesbury_Duck

To be honest, the way that "Mark" writes is a bit odd, especially the last few responses.  He seems to be very casually promising something he probably doesn't have the authority to do.  I wonder if he was in a notice period or something. 

DiddyDavies

I would say that legally wise, what you were told by the online agent is almost correct.
Under the Consumer Rights Act, when goods fail to conform to contract after one or more attempts, a consumer has the right to reject those goods. Doing this entitles you to a refund which can be a partial one to cover the time that you had use of the goods.
The above is assuming that the faults are due to a manufacturing defect and not caused by misuse.

Has a software related problem been ruled out? as the symptoms you describe could be caused by something that you have installed on the device.

Lip_Stick

Agree with the above in that there are only so many chances a company can have with repairing an item. Are you definitely sure it is nothing to do with software?

IvanOpinion

As someone who works closely with call centres I would say that agent overstepped the mark.  The only way I could see otherwise was if the agent was senior and could make such statements.  I think it is correct that you should be able to get a refund, since you have already allowed a 'repair' - good luck.